Planning our trip to Santiago, Chile, we knew we wanted to try the best of Chilean food. What better way to experience than to not only try it, but learn to cook it!
We took a cooking class with Uncorked Chile that was a highlight of our time in Santiago (and showcased the BEST food).
We met our guide, Francisco, at Mercado Central which is a huge market full of a variety of fresh fish. Each night deliveries of fish are made and early in the morning, chefs will come to the market and buy fish for their restaurants- some are even still alive! Francisco showed us all the different varieties of fish and explained what dishes are made with each type.
After Mercado Central, we headed over to La Vega Central, the fruit and vegetable market. This market was CRAZY. It was so crowded (being there in a Saturday morning made it more so than usual) but everything looked and smelled delicious. Francisco picked up some fresh avocados and tomatoes for our class while we were there.
After the markets we made our way to the kitchen (which was stunning). We started our class by learning how to make pisco sours and Chilean salsa with sopapillas (fried bread- amazing). Chris made the pisco sours for us and I helped cut vegetables for the salsa.
While we ate our first course, Fransisco prepared our desert and put it in the oven.
We then mixed fresh vegetables, beans and spices to make a traditional Chilean soup. While that was cooking we prepared the ceviche. Ceviche is raw fish mixed with oils, juices and fresh vegetables (sometimes fruit too). The fish starts to cook just from the acidity in the juice and creates this delicious flavoring in the fish.
We were taught how to prepare the ceviche on our dish to make it look nice and were served some (amazing) Chilean sauvignon blanc to pair with it.
After we finished our ceviche the soup was ready. This had such a unique taste and I could have probably finished the entire pot. We of course had some more wine with this. We left with full stomachs, new friends and ready to try these recipes back in Chicago.
Click HERE to book this class in Santiago!
*This post is sponsored by Uncorked Chile but all thoughts and opinions are our own*
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